You are here

Twitch Upcoming!

We're delaying our Twitch till AFTER a very specific KS update. You'll know what one, we'll talk about the twitch in the update. We need all hands to get this one ready.
Which still means something good is coming.https://www.twitch.tv/missingworldsmedia

So as many of you might know, contrary to what the new movies tell you, Thor has had his post filled by other heroes that are capable of wielding his hammer, which sort-of means that he has his own lineage thing going on.

This has just about the same likelihood of being permanent as Superman and Captain America's "deaths" were. Or Wolverine's imminent "death". Thor is going to be deemed "unworthy" - he'll find a way to become worthy again eventually. And this new character will probably still be around as the new Thunderstrike or something.

I was at the Austin comic con where I saw mark bagley. I when up to him and told him that I loved his thunderbolt run, I told him as a kid I really liked how cool he made wonder man look in his ionic form, so I told him "only you can make wonder man look cool!"

I love the design, I hate the social justice commentary that is being sparked by it.

I don't mind a female hero that wields the hammer, thats fine... but its not Thor... Thors a dude, he has a weapon, the weapon does things... Other suitable people can wield it, thats coo'.... but the name being transferred with the weapon is just clickbait.

I don't overly care, but no matter how cool the character is I wont ever like her because... she isn't thor.

—

Supporting how I can, Starting up a DA group for art, stories, and concepts to be collectedhttp://city-of-titans.deviantart.com/
Please join up if you plan to make or collect CoT related art.

I'd rather see fully developed good characters as opposed to gimmicks of the week. They have strong female characters, and while I don't have any real issue with a female Thor (I mean, come on, we had a frog Thor for a while) I do have a problem with a pandering creation, which is what this feels like to me. If they had just run the story and made it awesome, no one would have cared, and the new Thor could have met Drago, and Beta Ray Bill and the rest of the Thor Corps. But when you announce it on the View, you are quite obviously making a statement, not trying to tell a good solid story. All IMHO of course.

Honestly, I would have been ok with it, if they'd pulled the contemporary version of the late 80's early 90s gimick of "All new!" versions of characters (like new batman, or scarlet spider...or all the 2099's)

make her NOT look like thor... but BE thor....

...like Beta Ray Bill, basically, but a chick.

—

___________________________________....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...

I'm still reading it. Jason Aaron, who was writing the title before the gender-bend, has continued to write the comic. His writing is the main reason I got onboard the title before the gender-bend, and the main reason I have stayed on since. It is simply a great comic. The new artist, Ryan Dauterman, who came on with the new female character, is flat-out amazing. Furthermore, I have seen several articles showing that the new female lead is selling more issues than the classic male was selling.

Reading the comments on it, it has the fastest dropping numbers. High first sale is easily seen as people wanting to have that #1 for investment purposes, where as before people didn't think of that.

One of things I hated most about the Thor change, wasn't the Thor change. Thor was going to go back to being male when the next movie comes out, or else they'll change movie Thor to female. They want to match the movies. Why we got crappy X-Men outfits in the comics. Why Mystique lost her outfit. Why 616 Nick Fury now has a son who resembles the Ultimate Universe Nick Fury :p What I hated was how they promoted it. "NOW THERE'S A POWERFUL WOMEN SUPERHERO!!!" WTF?! So when I was reading Supergirl, X-Men (full of powerful women superheroes), Gen-13 (where the females basically kicked the male members butts :p), Cybernary, Witchblade, F5, Adrenalynn...etc and the ones I didn't read like Wonder Woman, Batwoman...etc...just weren't powerful superheroes now? o.O

The problem was never the characters. It was the art and writing. I love Grifter from WildC.A.T.S. as a concept and character, but then I go buy his comic and find art I'm not always in awe of and a story that's boring :p It's not the concept of the character's fault. I love the concept! I even kept reading in hopes it got better. It didn't and they cancelled the series because others didn't stay for it.

Now mind you, I realize if people do stay in mass numbers for what they all consider terrible work, in hopes it gets better, would likely just have the editors/company thinking all is fine :p So, it's a bit of a no win. The book sucks, loses readers, they decided to just cancel/reboot it :p

1.) She is calling herself Thor. From what we can tell it isn't her given name, but while using the hammer, she feels compelled to use the name. After meeting the classic character, he gave her his blessing to use the name. As long as he is unworthy to wield Mjolnir, he prefers not to use his own given name, and is calling himself "Odinson." As has been mentioned earlier, I'm sure that eventually he'll get around to reclaiming his name and weapon. For the time being, though, and by his own choice, he isn't Thor. She is.

2.) If you look at the link I provided earlier, you'll see the sales number for the female Thor comic are holding up remarkably well. When you compare them, issue to issue with the last run on classic, traditional male Thor, her numbers are much better for every issue. Her #1 is stronger than his #1. Her #2 is stronger than his #2, and so on, consistently for every issue out thus far.

3.) I couldn't quite tell if Brand X's last comment was about the new female Thor title or about one of the other comics mentioned in his(her?) post. In case it referred to the Thor title, I just want to defend it one more time. I really, really don't think folks are buying that title in mass numbers in spite of terrible work. I believe they are, like me, continuing to buy the comic because of the two very best reasons anyone ever should buy a comic - the story is great and the art is beautiful.

My question is pretty much what it's always been. Why do they have to steal names of popular characters? Why aren't they focusing more on Spider-Woman (which has her own title, just using her as an example) and other already established strong characters or making new ones completely instead of saying "Let's make Thor a female so we can use his name and then say there's finally a powerful female superhero" :p

Maybe because those other strong female characters have not captured an audience of the appropriate size.

Besides with female Thor, marvel has a tall, blonde, physically powerful and impressive Scandinavian women. One of the physical archetypes for male fantasies... I hope I'm not being too much of a male pig about it

On some level, marvel has to be sick of being beaten up by feminists because Dc has a big female hero book, and they don't

Not an unreasonable question, but to be honest, it's not one that haunts me much any more. All I can do is shrug about it. The way Marvel & DC choose to chase a fan base is always going to have its goofy elements, a lot of which are admittedly driven by their equally goofy fanbase.

That's exactly it. I find it a disservice to the fans of the popular characters. Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Amazing Spider-Man (looking at the list of sales for top 1000 of the year for 2014) did pretty solid (even #1 spot) with over 500k sales. Miles Morales Spider-Man first appears at number 403 on the list with under 50k. Then again at 702 with over 37k. Next at 814. 848. Lastly at 920.

The numbers suggest to me, people want Peter Parker as Spider-Man.

I think part of the reason we have a problem seeing the others get anywhere is they're not that great, advertised or they lack a good writer/artist. Normal things for popular characters as well, but some of them just go really bad. Like Spawn. Not only did it lose the artist people wanted to see, but the story went downhill and stayed there. :p

Harley Quinn appears to be doing well pretty consistently, so it's not a lack of interest in non-white male heroes/anti-heroes. Walking Dead. looks to have done pretty consistently well in 2014.

Goes back to artist/writer though imo. Gen-13 kept my attention until Gary Frank came along and the art and story both went to crap. When artist and writer changed, I was back and happy (a bit anyways), but yeah, visual medium and when it starts out with J Scott Campbell and switches to work like Gary Frank...to different from what got me into the comic and not good enough to keep me in it (maybe if the story was better but that went down too).

Let's look at the top web comics. A lot of female driven comics at the top of the list. So interest is there!

marvel is not doing so hot these days, IMO. the current leadership is very PC orientated... as such, we are seeing a lot of characters getting changed and their numbers are showing that these changes are not all that well liked...especially when compaired to numbers in the past with the original characters. it a form of "lazy" writing, imo. instead of coming up with something new and exciting that is PC orientated...instead, they force the PC onto established characters with decades of history... yeah...not a fan of marvel atm... haven't read anything in a couple years but I poke in from time to time at a couple site to see what is going on out there and I get disappointed every single time. ... sigh

Spider-Woman, I'm not liking the new costume look of hers, but the comic itself has been fun to read and I keep hoping to read more of her. I hope it does well and they give it enough attention to keep it going (and hope for the return of her original costume). Here's a strong woman superhero original hero of theirs, has had her own show, time to just give her the focus she deserves and not screw with her by "All New Spider-Woman who isn't Jessica Drew!"

always liked peter...we share the same first name so ya know he's a favorite. :) that said, I stopped actually reading his stuff years ago...before the whole clone thing even happened. now they have all kindsa spider folks out there...way to many if ya ask me. spiderman and spider woman...all I need.

regarding Jessica...yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if she gets some silly PC face lift at some point...they will get lazy and decide that Jessica is not hitting that preteen/teen female market and as such Jessica will be put to the pasture and Tiffany Tumbleweed, who is all of 13 years old, will become the new spiderwoman.

as far as costumes...best ones for both 'man and 'woman...the black ones, hands down....not far behind those are the classic costumes they wore.

The problem with her costume now, is it's a biker jacket, tights for pants, and futuristic sun glasses, as she drives around on a bike (makes a bit of sense there, as she doesn't fly fast and has no webs) being a hero the likes of Peter. She has quit Avengers and Shield.

Funnily enough I used to buy any comic with a new character on the cover (or costume even). I was an altoholic way before playing CoH. That said, I don't really like the shifting of characters too much. Even Captain America's changes (Bucky and now Falcon) are weird to me and they somewhat make sense. I think that some of the problems with old guard characters is in the writing. It can get to where the stories have literally already been told and the character needs a shakeup to remain relevant and interesting. i get it, but I think they need to be more creative in making the old characters work in new stories without having to physically change them.

Funnily enough I used to buy any comic with a new character on the cover (or costume even). I was an altoholic way before playing CoH. That said, I don't really like the shifting of characters too much. Even Captain America's changes (Bucky and now Falcon) are weird to me and they somewhat make sense. I think that some of the problems with old guard characters is in the writing. It can get to where the stories have literally already been told and the character needs a shakeup to remain relevant and interesting. i get it, but I think they need to be more creative in making the old characters work in new stories without having to physically change them.

Hell, I'd settle for a tried and tested Body Swap with another hero (or Villain) for a decent amount of time. :P

Ohhh... i think Superior SpiderMan did that. I didnt follow that development too closely. Did the fans find it overdone? :)

Patriarchal societies aren't PC, so they have to change them, even if they're a mythological society. Still, I like the idea of just a gender swapped Thor due to a joke from the god of mischief himself. Would've kept their PC move while keeping it Thor, so would've felt less PC and more of a story move and could have kept their whole marketing gimmick of "A powerful female superhero"...not keen on the View's remark of "Finally there's a powerful female superhero" :/

apparently they never heard of Carol Danvers (who I still prefer to be named as either Ms Marvel or Warbird), Rogue (who interestingly enough STOLE most of her powers from Carol...heh), Storm, Sif, Gamora, and the list goes on and on...there are tons of powerful femailes out there. the problem isn't in the characters, it's in the writing and the art...if you have those two, the readership will follow.

Brighellac wrote:
These are people who equate power to viewership. In terms of that argument only the female x-men you mention meet that bar and they're in an ensemble commanded by men

When the View did the story, it hadn't happened yet and so had no viewership numbers.
This was either poor reading from cue cards or poor journalistic skills of the View Leads. :p Maybe a bit of poor execution of Marvel propaganda?
They did the same with Falcon as Captain America. Thing is, when they made Nick Fury to look like Sam Jackson, it didn't feel like some sort of stunt. It felt like good art and story.

In this case switching Thor's gender does seem like a bit of a publicity stunt to me, but at least I didn't see it as being quite as "sensational" as perhaps the talking heads of the View might have taken it.

As an avid fan of all sorts of comic book/sci-fi type media the basic idea of gender swapping established characters doesn't strike me as being too weird or unusual. For instance I enjoyed both the original and new versions of BSG which included both Dirk Benedict's and Katee Sackhoff's versions of Starbuck. Both actors brought different qualities and highlights to the character which made them both unique and interesting in their own settings.

I think they did it to scare Chris Hemsworth into taking less money next time. Now for Iron Woman. On second though, RDJ would probably want to play that as well...Hey! That very well may be the ticket to extending his contract!

Brand X wrote:
Brighellac wrote:
These are people who equate power to viewership. In terms of that argument only the female x-men you mention meet that bar and they're in an ensemble commanded by men

When the View did the story, it hadn't happened yet and so had no viewership numbers.
This was either poor reading from cue cards or poor journalistic skills of the View Leads. :p Maybe a bit of poor execution of Marvel propaganda?
They did the same with Falcon as Captain America. Thing is, when they made Nick Fury to look like Sam Jackson, it didn't feel like some sort of stunt. It felt like good art and story.

In this case switching Thor's gender does seem like a bit of a publicity stunt to me, but at least I didn't see it as being quite as "sensational" as perhaps the talking heads of the View might have taken it.
As an avid fan of all sorts of comic book/sci-fi type media the basic idea of gender swapping established characters doesn't strike me as being too weird or unusual. For instance I enjoyed both the original and new versions of BSG which included both Dirk Benedict's and Katee Sackhoff's versions of Starbuck. Both actors brought different qualities and highlights to the character which made them both unique and interesting in their own settings.

See, there's another time I didn't consider it as some sort of publicity stunt or some appeal to some PC propaganda. It just seemed to be.

So obviously some things can be done and be great! Could just be the execution and Marvel likes to fail at it? :p

It may be that Thor is a character from mythology that predates the marvel universe

To be honest I never really liked Thor as a Marvel comic book character precisely because he/she/it was a 100% rip-off of an established figure in a real world historical mythology. Sure it can be said that many of the main DC characters are very closely related to and/or based on the classic Greco-Roman pantheon but at least DC had the decency to not name any of their characters directly after any of the main gods/goddesses. ;)

So for me it’s not so much a matter of whether or not Marvel's character is male or female – it's the annoyance that they didn't even have enough originality to bother to use a different name/backstory from that of an existing Norse deity.

If only they Did something (or similar) to what Stargate did for Egyptian Pharaohs myths.
So basically have the Asgard Aliens crash their ship and have no way back (for a bit) while assimilating in the Nordic regions. ;)

If only they Did the something (or similar) to what Stargate did for Egyptian Pharaohs myths.
So basically have the Asgard Aliens crash their ship and have no way back (for a bit) while assimilating in the Nordic regions. ;)

Yeah I probably would've liked the idea of a "superhero" modeled generically on Nordic mythology. I just didn't like the idea that Marvel's character was supposed to be the actual god Thor. It just felt like Marvel was "phoning it in" and not even trying to be original in any way. Sure they tried to explain that the Asgardians were "aliens" but DC never tried to say that Superman was (for example) Zeus himself. As least Superman was his own character, not trying to be the exact embodiment of an established mythological figure.

It doesn't bother me to much that Marvel opted to use Thor...or any other god/goddess in their portfolio of characters. although, personally, never been a fan of thor himself...I like the norse mythology though, and even use it for the background of a character of mine (Keles, the Asgarthyr Gryphon). if one avoids the "main" gods/goddesses there is a lot of fertile ground to cultivate a hero from. :)